Into The Breach
by turbomagnus
Summary: Within the United States military there exists a classified multi-service Special Anti-Terrorism Team answerable only to the highest levels. Its purpose; to defend human freedom against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now the greatest threat to that freedom is about to reveal itself...


Disclaimer: G.I. Joe and all associated characters, situations and locations are the property of Hasbro and used without permission or intent to profit. Any resemble to real people, places or events is...

Well, I'll leave _that one _up to you, the readers, to decide...

Author's Note; First, an explanation. This has no connection to any of my previous G.I. Joe stories which were, quite frankly, childish ego-stroking and with my attempts to cram too much into them quickly grew too large and ungainly to work with until they reached the point that I just couldn't find it in me to write them anymore. For one thing, I encountered one of the main flaws with a self-insert main character; you grow, you change, you become someone different and you're not the person that character's based on anymore, so you can't really connect with them.  
But I still am a G.I. Joe fan at heart, I grew up on it, I grew up with it. I still have an old Steel Brigade figure from the early days.  
And that's where I found new inspiration to write G.I. Joe stories. The Steel Brigade idea that not all Joes were active and visable members like Hawk, Duke, Scarlett, Snake-Eyes and so forth, but that some were essentially the G.I. Joe version of the National Guard. It also helped that I was introduced to the classic Mission Impossible series where the teams were handpicked for each mission from a pool of IMF members that otherwise led normal lives. I had the genesis of an idea, but I needed one other thing to make it work, an outsider, a newcomer to the established way of things to give readers someone to relate to and learn along with as they learned about the new situation they found themselves in...  
And I'll admit that I created a self-insert for that, despite previous problems with them. All I ask is that you give the story a chance first before you decide 'Oh, great, another Self-insert becomes the hero story, forget it' and go read My Little Pony fanfics instead.

* * *

"G.I. Joe: Special Anti-Terrorism Team"  
'Into The Breach'  
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

* * *

"Some people lead lives of quiet desperation, wishing they could make a difference, leave their mark on the world. A lot of people leave a mark without making a difference, they're all talk... but the ones who really make the difference are the ones you'll never know were here... Now _I_ know... and knowing is half the battle..."

* * *

Not even the people he really worked for knew his real identity, that was the way he liked it. He had a cover identity for any place or organization he might need from U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division to an Ex-KGB Major-turned-Black Marketeer to an English birdwatching club in Hampshire; right now, he was Phil Provost, an investigator for Southeastern Insurance Group based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Currently, Phil was investigating a robbery at an art museum in Miami for SIG and he was sincerely glad that he had mastered the art of having an expression of rapt and intrigued attention despite secretly wishing that the person he was listening to would just shut up.

Because the truth was, he really didn't care how valuable the pieces that weren't taken or damaged were. Any other day, any other case he would have foisted off on another investigator and gone back to counting the time until he could get back to his real life. But this wasn't one of those days and this wasn't one of those cases, because this case was one that his real life was very interested in; security camera footage had shown the theives to be part of a group that he had been tracking for a while, now he just needed evidence to confirm it was them and not a group of copycats. If it were them, they would have left their 'calling card' behind, just like they had every time before when they had made these strange thefts, just like had been found in every safehouse they had been tracked down to only to have cleared out before it could be raided...

He wanted them. He wanted them so bad, his teeth hurt from grinding them.

That want wasn't reflected in his voice as Phil blaisely asked the museum director if he could look around the scene of the thefts for a few minutes, claiming it was standard Southeastern Insurance procedure, which the bookish and balding man easily agreed to allow. As soon as the director had left him alone, Phil quickly got to work, looking in places that even an experienced law enforcement forensics team might miss, searching for that one vital clue that would confirm his suspicions. It was only a matter of minutes before he noticed a glint of light reflecting off a piece of metal where none should have been, almost un-noticible unless an observer had a clue what to look for. This was why he was here. Glancing around to make sure he was alone, Phil pulled a small magnet on an extendable wand out from his pocket, the same kind easily found at automotive and hardware stores, and slid it into the thin gap between the plinth of a statue and the wall it stood next to, a gap formed by the fact that the baseboard molding along the wall kept the plinth from being pushed flush against it. A sharp clicking sound told him that the magnet had hold of what he was looking for and Phil pulled it out, collapsing the magnet's wand as he did so. Pulling a small metal disc the size of a fifty-cent piece off the end of the magnet, he replaced the tool in his pocket and moved away from the statue into the center of the room. Under the natural light let in by the room's glass ceiling, Phil looked up the metal disc, turning it over in his hand as he studied at the symbol on it. After a moment, with his free hand he pulled out a cell phone and pressed a speed dial button, still looking at the disc.

"Clay, it's Phil... Overcast up there? Okay. Bad news... yeah, it's them... whoever 'they' are."

Pressing end, Phil slipped both phone and disc into his pocket.

Now it was time to really go to work.


End file.
